Chapter 6
Nel slept badly. She dreamed there was a queue of Carrinya locals shuffling down the hallway, craning their necks to get a look at her when they reached the bedroom door.
Cath was supervising the queue, hurrying them along when they loitered for too long.
She’d woken from that one, only to be delivered into yet another chaotic nightmare full of cameos by random people from her past.
It was a relief when the first rays of daylight leaked through the gap in the heavy curtains.
Nel got up and rummaged through her bag in the almost dark, feeling for the rubber of her wetsuit.
The floorboards creaked quietly under her bare feet as she tiptoed down the hallway and slipped out the front door to her car.
She turned the heat up high, cursing the initial blast of frigid air, and put the wipers on to clear the frost from the windscreen.
When she reached the lighthouse, she cut the engine and watched the steely grey sea below.
There was a good swell left over from yesterday’s storm. Four foot at least, maybe five.
She tucked her surfboard under one arm and walked across the grass towards the bush track.
The old lighthouse stood to her right, tall and white, the smooth concrete walls of the tower tapering in gracefully until they reached the lantern above a narrow stone balcony.
Nel had found graffiti there once, engraved in the curved concrete wall.
A message to Maddie. Would it still be there?
It was a stupid thought really, given how much time had passed, but her curiosity got the better of her and she changed course. There was no harm in looking.
She put her board down on the grass and held her breath as she rounded the stark stone wall. And then there it was.
To beautiful Maddie,
taken too soon.
Sweet 16 forever.
RIP
The lighthouse had been repainted in the intervening years, probably more than once, so the indentations were barely visible. But they were there. Nel ran her fingers over the words, feeling the letters under her touch.
When she first found the inscription in the months after she lost her friend, it had given her comfort.
Someone else had loved Maddie like she did, was missing her like she was.
These words, hidden on the lighthouse wall, felt different to the public shrine that had grown and grown at the lookout in the days after her death, a performative pile of bouquets and cards and teddy bears.
She had never worked out whose words they were. Harriet’s perhaps.
Nel picked up her board again and followed the precarious path across the red rock face, through the scrub, down to the rocky outcrop below, and tiptoed over the sharp rocks and molluscs.
Icy water seeped in through a fraying seam as she plunged onto the back of a wave, sending a shiver down her spine.
There were only a couple of others out—two guys, mid-twenties—and she kept her distance.
This break was a fiercely guarded secret and the locals here were territorial.
She’d surfed here with her dad since she was ten, when she’d graduated from the long slow rides at Kiddies Corner, but she wasn’t a local anymore.
She looked back at the coastline. Cape Caution, where the lighthouse loomed above, protruded into the ocean so that it was almost an island.
To the north, the sand dunes of Millers Beach disappeared into a salt haze.
On the south side was Deception Bay, blue-green beneath red cliffs.
Sailors had named it long ago as a warning for others.
It looked idyllic, but a hidden rock shelf below the surface meant it was fraught with danger.
But the same reason it was feared by sailors meant it was revered by surfers. The rock shelf made it work like a reef break, and wave after perfect wave peeled off the point, sitting up and barrelling when the swell was big enough.
She looked up at the cliffs, picturing the scene in the days when Maddie was missing, when police and volunteers scoured the coastline searching for anything that might help them locate her.
Three days. That was how long it took for Maddie’s pale bloated body to wash up on Jacksons Beach, eight kilometres south.
Three days when no one spoke of anything but Maddie, whispering theories behind their hands.
Three days punctuated by appeals to the public for information, for anything that might help, no matter how small, while helicopters thrummed overhead.
Three days when Maddie’s body was adrift in the ocean, making its way on currents and tides to its final resting place on a desolate stretch of sand.
The swell of an approaching wave pulled Nel back to the present and she paddled to catch it.
The rising sun lit the wave from within.
It glowed aquamarine as its momentum gathered her up, exhilaration coursing through her veins as she travelled down its face.
Breaking water rushed in her ears until she pulled off and turned to paddle back out.
God, she’d missed this! She’d bought a new board when she returned to Sydney, but she’d been so busy with work that she never managed to get out. Now she wondered why.
An hour later she forced herself to go in. Her mum would be up by now. She would be wondering where Nel was. They had a meeting with the undertaker at ten.
Her feet were numb as she walked across the rocks, her face tingling in the cold air.
The car park was empty. Standing at the boot of her car, she peeled her wetsuit down to her waist and pulled a hoodie over her bikini top, then crouched down, blowing warm air into her hands, trying to get the blood flowing back into her icy fingers.
As she stood up, she noticed a lycra-clad cyclist on the ring road beyond the exit of the car park, staring in her direction. He was just too far away for her to see his face clearly, but she thought she recognised the dark hair, the square jaw.
She looked away quickly, wrapping her towel around her waist and slamming the boot shut, but when she looked up again, the cyclist was still staring in her direction. She’d swear it was Ryan Warner. It felt like a long time before he turned away and rolled slowly around the bend and out of sight.